Spider

by Patrick McGrath

Spider is gaunt, threadbare, unnerved by everything from his landlady to the smell of gas. He tells us his story in a storm of beautiful language that slowly reveals itself as a fiendishly layered construction of truth and illusion. With echoes of Beckett, Poe, and Paul Bowles, Spider is a tale of horror and madness, storytelling and skepticism, a novel whose dizzying style lays bare the deepest layers of subconscious terror.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Gothic, Thriller, Mystery, Mental Illness, Psychology

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Patrick McGrath was born in London and grew up near Broadmoor Hospital where his father was Medical Superintendent. He was educated at Stonyhurst College. He is a British novelist whose work has been categorized as gothic fiction. He is married to actress Maria Aitken and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes there is a book you just know you’re going to love; it can lurk on the edges of your consciousness for years, remaining unread, but persisting as something to look forward to. Spider is one of those books for me. I had always thought I would love it, and happily, I did – although ‘happily’ is certainly not a word one might generally associate with this story.

Dennis Cleg (nicknamed Spider) is living – temporarily, he tells us – in a boarding house, having recently returned to London from Canada. He is a strange and lonely figure who speaks often of his love for ‘wetness and darkness and skies like thick grey blankets, for it is only at such times that I feel at home in the world’. He is staying in the neighbourhood he grew up in, and his bleak wanderings prompt him to remember the city of his youth – a pre-war London, for the story is set in 1957, and Spider has been away for 20 years.

Spider decides to write down his recollections in a notebook, and we learn something of his life story: a largely cheerless childhood, his father a bully. Greater trials loom; he speaks of a ‘tragedy’ that took place later. As he writes, events from his account seem to overlap with the present, like the fact that his landlady has the same name as the woman he blames for the breakdown of his family. ‘Is a memory always and only the echo of its last occasion’, he wonders, or is ‘the horror of multiplicity’ distorting what really happened?

With its soupy atmosphere and phantasmic characters, Spider is a decidedly gothic novel. It progresses as the story of what happened between Spider’s parents and how this affected his life, but it also represents an unravelling of Spider’s identity and sense of self. Though not entirely unexpected, the climax of this tale is imbued with horror due to a combination of ratcheting tension and powerfully disturbing imagery. It’s exactly the kind of dark character study that rarely fails to captivate me. McGrath’s writing makes Spider an unforgettable creation.

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[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve always found it odd that I can recall incidents from my boyhood with clarity and precision begins Dennis Cleg, the protagonist and narrator of Spider, and yet events that happened yesterday are blurred, and I have no confidence in my ability to remember them accurately at all. Dennis writes down the story of his life in a notebook, having recently returned to London after spending 20 years in Canada, which he refuses to talk about, and is staying at a boarding house in the London's East End - not very far away from where his childhood home was, and where a terrible tragedy struck his family many years ago.

With Spider, Patrick McGrath has crafted a bona-fide contemporary Gothic novel, complete with all the major themes of the genre - a frame narrative of love, betrayal and murder, obsession, isolation and slow descent into the uncertain and madness. As Dennis tries to reconstruct his childhood, he finds himself increasingly unable to draw the distinction between the real and imagined. The boarding house at which he stays in is run by a Ms. Wilkinson, which shares the same name with a woman his father had an affair - and which he blames for destroying the already very troubled marriage of his parents, and taking place of his mother. He writes that he is troubled by other tenants, though he never seems to see them - yet they bother him by making noise and disturbing his writing in the journal, which he hides from all eyes - in the drawer, under the floor, up in the unused chimney.

Where Spider truly excels is the atmosphere - McGrath does a terrific job with not only capturing the voice of a troubled, confused narrator, but also the foggy, dominating industrial landscape of the 1950's London. You can almost choke on the smoke and fog, and feel the soot and dust settle on every part of your body, as the narrator takes you on his journey through the narrow streets, alleyways and canals, surrounded by small houses, factories and pubs, all of them filled with unhappy people. The city is covered by the Great Smog, but so is Spider's mental state, which slowly disintegrates along with his story. I suspect that something very wrong is happening inside me, he writes, that it's not the food at all (filthy though it is), but that something far worse is involved.

The novel has been adapted into a film by David Cronenberg, with Ralph Fiennes portraying Dennis - I haven't seen it, but I'm interested in how Cronenberg could convey an intimate first person narration via film., and how well has he captured the setting so well described by McGrath in his book.

[Théo d'Or]

Darkness is more intriguing than light, and a degenerate - more interesting than a so-called normal man, and a crime - more fictional bidder than a gray day, in which nothing happens.

This is the premise from which the author starts, in "Spider".
The volume could have just as well been called " about pathology" , and could be labeled as a case study of an paranoid- schizophrenic one.
McGrath's refined gothic- calophile style could, however, be overshadowed by the subject of the narrative, and for an eager reader, it might be too much.

We are in '60s England.( I don't know if it matters, anyway).
The character narrator, Dennis Cleg, meaning "Spider" - exposes some terrible things to us : that he hear footsteps, voices, everything against the backdrop of a strange sensation that his body dries, and he gets the spider's grip , that reality is other.
And the only one we have acces to, is Spider's mind.
So far, the volume is not too convincing, and you may be tempted to stop.
But ;
Dennis is not just a banal madman who kills his mother.
Not at all.
Because our narrator performs a remarkable inner self- dissection : Yes, he's crazy, but an extremely talented one, who wraps you up in his demented monologue, exactly as a spider wraps its victim, before killing it : slowly, gracefully, without greed.

In other words, McGrath's performance is the way he draws his hero.
Dennis's monologue is a clinical record, loaded with the charm and baroque of a stylized phrase, and extremely visual.
This dickensian language, with echoes of Poe's prose, ( yes, this suggested me, still from the first lines ) - turns a thriller, with a relatively tender subject, into an excellent book.
A psychic endoscopy, from which we understand how it is to be in the mind of a madman.

And, admitting that you don't have to spend too much time there, it's a great adventure.

[Natalie Richards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second book by Patrick McGrath, the first being Asylum which I really really liked and preferred to this one. Having said that, it has nothing to do with the writing, which is so good, rather the storyline didn`t hold my interest as much and I wasn`t longing to get back to the book whenever I had to put it down. I will look for this author`s other books to read.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A profoundly unsettling novel...

Somewhere in the house a toilet flushed, the pipes rumbled, and in my mind's eye I saw a dead soul in threadbare, grubby pajamas emerging from a lavatory with bleary eyes crusted with yellow sleep-matter, foul of breath and yawning stupidly, and shuffling back to his narrow bed to slip again into the sweet oblivion of sleep; and at that moment I would have traded a hand, or an arm—or an arm and a leg!—to be a dead soul with an empty mind and the sweet possibility of sleep before me. To be awake is to be available to torment, and this is the full complete meaning of life.

[Hux · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can't recall where I first heard about this book but a brief glance at the synopsis (a man wandering the streets struggling with his mental illness) appealed to my natural inclination for nihilistic literature. But the book wasn't quite what I thought it would be. Yes, the main character (Dennis Cleg or Spider) is a man with mental health issues who regularly takes walks by the canal but the book is more about his reminisces regarding a traumatic childhood incident than anything else. The story he tells about his mother and father, however, is enormously engaging and quickly sucked me in.

But then halfway through the book, we begin to discover that Spider might not be the most reliable of narrators. The story switches from the one he is telling us about his parents and becomes more focused on his twenty years in an asylum. This is all well and good but the problem I had was that I was actually enjoying the story of his childhood and was frankly fascinated to discover what happened next. As such, I was not that interested in his current mental state or the asylum he was living in. But it becomes clear that the reason for this sudden change of pace is to reiterate that Spider's version of events (the story he is telling us) might not actually be very accurate. You can see the twist coming a mile off and part of me hoped McGrath would subvert my expectations (but he didn't). I wanted the story of his parents to continue but once we get the reveal, there's very little point in doing so. And that's part of the problem.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the book and found the prose both inventive and fluid. But I really don't care for books with plot twists of this nature. Not unless there's something a little unique about it (something surreal or creepy or ambiguous). I couldn't help but feel a little short changed. That being said I really liked the book but simply found my interest waning once it becomes clear that Spider's memory of events couldn't be trusted. Definitely worth a read though.

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 4 out of 5]

valla tımarhane’yi beğenmiştim zaten ama sanırım örümcek’i daha çok sevdim. patrick mcgrath yine bildiği yerlerde dolaşıyor, zaten bu kitap daha eski. babasının hekimlik yaptığı akıl hastanesinden büyüyen yazar akıl hastalıklarını kurguya sokmakta cidden çok mahir.
1957’de londra’dayız. atmosferi öyle iyi çiziyor ki sanki sisten, soğuktan, rutubetten öleceğiz. ayrıca savaş sonrası fakirlik, yokluk ve mutsuzluk da var.
20 yıl sonra kanada’dan döndüğünü söyleyen dennis bir pansiyonda kalıyor. pansiyonda ölü ruhlar var, tavan arasında onu rahatsız eden sesler var, pansiyon sahibi ise yavaş yavaş ailesini mahveden hayat kadınına dönüşüyor.
tüm bu anlamsızlıklar yavaş yavaş çözülecek ama elimizde güvenilmez bit anlatıcı var, günlüğüne yazdıkları, hatırladıkları ve sanrılarından hangisi doğru hangisi yanlış romanın sonralarına doğru öğreniyoruz. işte o zaman her şeyi bir daha baştan okumak gerekiyor çünkü biz en başta dennis’in versiyonuna göre dizdik her şeyi kafamızda, oysa bir de örümcek’in versiyonu var.
akıl hastalıklarını hem büyüleyici buluyor hem de çok korkuyorum. evde yapayalnız, bakımsız ve ilgisiz büyüyen dennis’in kafayı nerede kırdığını ve babasının eve getirdiği hayat kadınıyla bozduğunu çok merak ediyorum mesela. 13 yaşında bir çocuğun kişiliğini ikiye bölüp zorba babasından ve ilgisiz annesinden kendisini böylesine koruması çok çok acıklı bir yandan da…
sonra filmini de izledim, elbette roman kadar derinlikli değil ama senaryoyu patrick mcgrath yazdığı için anlatıcıya ve hatıralara bulduğu çözüm süperdi.
ayrıca şimdiye kadar okuduğum en kusursuz epona kitabı. gerek çeviri, gerek tashih açısından çok beğendim. elinize sağlık onur ışık.

[Nesellanum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spider is an intensely intimate experience of madness, schizophrenia, and isolation. The thick atmosphere is intoxicating and the writing and construction is impressive. Our main character, Dennis (aka Spider), pulls you into his vulnerable mind in a way that breeds sympathy and compassion, but soon McGrath leads the reader to question his reliability, perception, and innocence. Breadcrumbs of truth sparsely appear as the pages turn and our suspicions grow, delusions are expertly magnified and a haunting gloom saturates every passage. I very much enjoyed this book and will certainly be reading more McGrath.

This book came to my attention from the superb Cronenberg film adaptation, which I highly recommend checking out as well.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the author’s second novel and third book (following on the collection “Blood and Water and Other Tales” and his debut novel “The Grotesque”). At least for the moment, I am reading his works in the order of publication. I thought that the short stories were very good and fit their lengths well. As noted in my review, I liked “The Grotesque”, but thought that I could have appreciated it more. After more reflection, in addition to the reasons previously cited, I think that it was not suited to the length. Longer or shorter? I’m not sure, but I think going in either direction might have enhanced the book.

With “Spider” the story and its length feel entirely natural. Is this because of the tale or the increasing maturity of the author? I do not know, but, for me, the whole thing hung together better; which is an odd thing to write about this novel. Here, we have a man, Dennis Cleg with who we have a firsthand view of his descent into deeper madness. I say deeper because he is not ever sane by any definition of the term.

His is the voice that tells us of his past and present. Often interspersed, sometimes intertwined, as in this passage from page 68:

Queer thoughts, no? I sighed. I bent down to pull my book out from under the linoleum. Nothing there! I groped. Momentary lurch of horror as I assimilated the possibility of the book’s absence. Theft? Of course – by Mrs. bloody Wilkinson, who else? Then there it was, pushed just a bit deeper than I’d expected; no little relief. My father was stumbling blindly through a fog, barely conscious of his whereabouts, the chaos within him further befuddled with the beer he’d just drunk. Great relief, in fact; what on earth would I do if she got her hands on it? Is the best place for it really under the linoleum? Isn’t there a hole somewhere I can tuck it into? The streetlights were smears of light in the fog, flecks and splinters of weak fractured yellowy radiance that picked up the glitter of wild light in his eyes, the fleeting blur of whiteness of his nose and brow as he charged by. Somewhere I’ve seen a whole, I know I have, but where, where? On he blundered until at last he saw a building aglow, and like a moth to the flame he drew near, and found himself outside the Dog and Beggar. In he went, into the dry warmth of the place, and suddenly there was the smell of beer and tobacco in his nostrils and the murmur of talk in his ears. I just can’t afford to take the chance.

In this single paragraph we see the rich, descriptive prose that Mr. McGrath uses to draw us in and involve us in the story. There is little dialog and what there is focuses mostly on recollection of past events. With most characters the conversations are brief and with few words issuing from the mouth of our narrator. Instead we have an exposition of portions of his life: events from his early adolescence, his present-day life, and snatches of his past 20 years in “Canada”.

We journey through his world of concrete objects and fanciful imaginings. His is a bizarre universe, filled with thoughts and suspicious that appear to have a tiny basis in fact, but quickly expand and develop into pure fiction. But we don’t know this at first; instead we learn in only as we take this trip through his Byzantine mind. The convolutions of thoughts and the compartments he has created finally make it unmistakable: this is not merely an unreliable narrator; this is a man who is mad and is getting madder by the sentence.

“Spider” has references to the East End of London and elsewhere, but it does not have the English “in jokes” that I read but could not appreciate in “The Grotesque”. While both stories contain the disintegration of a man, I appreciated this book much more. Never having been schizophrenic or criminally insane, I can’t say if the internal “discussions” that Spider holds are accurate, but they easily convey how such a mind might think.

I did not rush my way through this book. I have too many other demands on my time and I believe that this tale benefits from the savoring of it. Perhaps others have felt compelled to read it in a single sitting. I can understand that kind of compulsion with a good book, but this is one that I think is too dreary for that. And make no mistake; this is a good book, with excellent writing and a twisted, tortured soul for who we become the proverbial fly on the wall. A strong “4” stars.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Spider is one of those neurotic, solitary and nervous narrators, a bit like the protagonist in Suskind's The Pigeon or Hermann Ungar's The Maimed. He's incredibly unreliable and as the novel advances he grows increasingly frenzied as truths from the past bubble up in his warped memory. Although we get an idea of what has happened, what with its sudden changes in perspective, hallucinations and unreliable memories, the effect is very disorientating and leaves many questions unanswered.

This is a very slow, muted story. I was reminded a bit of Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-la-Morte, the haunted narrator wandering about deserted city streets, the evocative prose, the silence and solitude and constant reminiscing. But the similarity is primarily one of mood.

This is a pleasurable read, although it's slow and focused on atmosphere, it's written in a clear, tight style that is evocative and visual. Spider inhabits a depressing dusk-world of grayness, twilight, rain, fog and shadow. He wanders the deserted streets that are blighted and decaying, haunted by his traumatic memories.

It's hard not to feel yourself in the room with great details describing a belting from his father:

Then, as well as the creaking, there would be the unbuckling of his belt—the clank of prong and buckle, and the slither of leather pulled through trouser loops—and I can never hear those sounds now without thinking of pain [...] He would take up a position behind me, stamp his boots once or twice, the belt now folded back upon itself and gripped just below the buckle. There was an old nail half driven into the beam, just above where I laid my arms, and I’d curl my little finger round it and think of something else.

I wouldn't call this a horror novel, although it certainly enters into that territory toward the end. This is a slow-burn psychological thriller, Gothic in mood, and ultimately a very sad novel about trauma. But toward the end things DO get weird:

There is material rotting slowly inside me, the composting remains of organs I no longer need, and it is because the odors given off by this process have begun to seep through the pores of my skin...

Once [...] I felt my mouth fill up with small birds, which I crunched between my teeth, and then their feathers and blood and broken bones started to choke me, and I retched and retched but nothing came up. [...] Another time I found a baby with a hole in the top of its head, and through the hole I sucked up and swallowed everything in the baby’s head until its face collapsed like an empty rubber mask.

By the end I felt like I should have enjoyed this more than I did. It just didn't hold my interest strongly. It is a "complete unit," in the sense that nothing feels missing and it achieves what it sets out to achieve, I just thought its goals were humble, it feels claustrophobic and constrained. I wouldn't re-read it, but I'd read more by this author.

[Lula · Rating 4 out of 5]

Avevo iniziato e quasi subito abbandonato questo libro mesi fa a causa della lentezza delle prime pagine, e l'ho ripreso in mano in questi giorni per puro caso e senza aspettarmi granché: è stata una bellissima sorpresa, e superato lo scoglio della parte iniziale la trama e lo stile dell'autore mi hanno subito catturata!
La storia di Spider è raccontata in prima persona da Dennis (o, appunto, "Spider"), un personaggio che, fin dalle prime pagine e inconsapevolmente, dà chiari segni di avere una percezione (clinicamente) distorta e allucinata della realtà. Al presente della narrazione, nel contesto di una bizzarra pensione dell'East End londinese, Dennis ricostruisce la storia di un confuso trauma adolescenziale che nel corso del romanzo assume contorni sempre più nitidi, e che, ed è qui che secondo me la trama riesce, per Dennis e per il lettore lucido si concretizza inevitabilmente in direzioni del tutto diverse.
Si intuisce molto presto nella lettura come si sono svolti davvero i fatti, ma del resto la soluzione del mistero è assolutamente secondaria: il vero centro di questo romanzo, infatti, è la mente di Dennis, che nella sua confusione psichica crede di vivere (e quindi di fatto vive) una realtà terrorizzante, continuamente stravolta da allucinazioni visive, uditive e olfattive. Quanto poi la rappresentazione della percezione di Dennis corrisponda all'esperienza reale di una persona affetta dal suo disturbo non ho l'autorità di giudicarlo, ma anche al netto di questo e al netto della mia passione pazza acritica e totalizzante per l'espediente classico del narratore inaffidabile io credo sinceramente che dal punto di vista puramente letterario tutto questo funzioni.
Il fatto, poi, che alla fine del romanzo le questioni minori della vicenda ricostruita dal protagonista rimangano fondamentalmente irrisolte è secondo me quel "di più" che rende la storia di Dennis ancora più credibile ed efficace.
Tolgo una stella solo perché in alcune parti, appunto all’inizio e direi anche ai tre quarti circa del libro, il ritmo della narrazione risulta forse un po’ lento.
Un libro molto originale e che intrattiene, lo consiglio!

[Paromita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Profoundly disturbing and bleak.
Compelling read.

[S.P. Aruna · Rating 5 out of 5]

While the US has Stephen King, the UK has Patrick McGrath. Not quite the same, but many of McGrath's books are forays into a deviant reality, enough to nominate him as the lord of the macabre. In this book, the prose is exquisitely eerie and convincing, bringing the reader into the mind of a truly disturbed person, the best attempt at doing this that I have ever read. A chilling read.

[Ralu_Constant_Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adoor! Una din preferatele mele ever, clar! 🤭💚

[Reid Page-McTurner · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I pause; it is very late now. I take a moment to relight the dead one. The house is utterly silent around me; outside, the rain has stopped, and the streets too are silent. An odd thing, to sit here with the book before me, the pencil in my fingers, remembering a time of remembering. Is it always thus, I wonder? Smoke is drifting in lazy coils toward the faintly crackling light bulb overhead; I lean back, fingers linked behind my head, my outstretched legs crossed at the ankles, and watch it diffuse in the gloom. Is a memory always and only the echo of its last occasion? Which in turn is just an echo of the one before? A flicker of unease in my belly at this, a small spurt of alarm: like the cross-strutting of the gasworks uprights, the horror of multiplicity is there, the horror of reproduction; and yet what I remembered that blustery day in the vegetable gardens (I was leaning on the handle of a garden fork, the smell of the compost strong in my nostrils) what I remembered seems now so fresh, so crisp, so sharp and clear to me that I cannot doubt, I cannot doubt, for the simple reason that I saw it, I was there, hanging around the allotments in the days after Christmas in case my mother came back again. And my father, you see, was working his compost.”

REVIEW: my second read of SPIDER in less than 10 months and it’s quiet, eerie, atmospheric subtleties continue to reveal themselves. This slender, oddly horrifying tale is a masterful example of how good descriptive writing has the power to evoke feelings from the reader. We read toward a slow, spiralling descent that purposefully blurs the line between past and present, reality and … whatever is the stuff that nightmares are made of.
🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️


Sept 22, 2022
REVIEW: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 🕷 THIS IS IT. 🤯 Wow. Patrick McGrath’s #SPIDER is a slim, razor-sharp, brillIantly written psychological horror that just blew my f’n mind. (I sat down to read a chapter or two and tore through it in a single sitting!) This is probably the best book I’ve read all year and will undoubtedly go down as one of my all time favourites. It has echoes of Kafka and Camus, but is probably most similar to #Perfume by #patricksüsskind with a sort of Christopher Nolan-esque treatment of time and identity … This overlooked gem is atmospheric and subtle, but will have you constantly guessing - and your stomach in knots - right to the poetic and brilliant end. 🦷🥬
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It was turned into a 2002 film by Canadian legend #davidcronenberg
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#patrickmcgrath

[Cora Lockhart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately, this is one of those books that I had not heard of until I inadvertently discovered the movie, which was pretty stellar as well and this may or may not have something to do with Ralph Fiennes! It was difficult as I read the book not to picture him in it, and this is one of the reasons I like reading books before seeing the movie, but this did not distract from its odd beauty. It's a story that revolves around a schizophrenic known as Spider. That he earned this name from his mother when he was a young boy because of his fascination with the creatures becomes a metaphorical impetus to the story. Spiders weave their own webs, in which they can move freely about, however, they are easily caught in the web of other spiders. Spider Cleg is released from an asylum where he was placed as a boy of ten. He narrates the story but jumps from first to third person--just as a schizophrenic may do. In this way, I think he is putting space between what really happened to his mother and what he believes happened to her the day she was murdered in 1950s London. McGrath is a master storyteller but this is probably my favorite piece. It combines Kafka, Freud, Beckett and Dostoevsky all in a neat little psychotic package. Great read!!!

[Simona · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Spider" è lontano anni luce da "Follia", l'altro romanzo di Mcgrath che considero il suo capolavoro.
"Spider" è un viaggio nel mondo della follia, delle allucinazioni, un viaggio nella psicosi. Un viaggio nella mente malata, le turbe psichiche di uno schizofrenico. Non è facile leggere un libro del genere, a causa delle continue regressioni tra presente e passato e il lettore non può che prendere atto di ciò che legge, scivola sempre più nello stesso baratro del protagonista, finendo per farsi del male e vivendo la sua stessa angoscia.
Interessante se amate scoprire cosa si cela nella mente di uno psicopatico, in quanto Mcgrath si rivela straordinario nell'indagare l'animo umano, altrimenti lasciate perdere, in quanto la freddezza domina non solo nel protagonista, ma anche nel lettore che precipita in questo mondo.

[D'Ailleurs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Δεν ξέρω γιατί έχει περάσει απαρατήρητο αυτό το βιβλίο όπως και η ταινία του Κρόνενμπεργκ (την είχα δει τότε). Κάτι που ξεκινάει ως μια ιστορία αναμνήσεων παιδικής ηλικίας γίνεται ένα roller-coaster παράνοιας, παραφροσύνης, σχιζοφρένειας μέσα από τα μάτια του ίδιου του ασθενή. Πολύπλοκο, μπερδεμένο σε σημεία, θέλει προσοχή στην ανάγνωση και η τεράστια απεχθή γραμματοσειρά του Ψυχογιού δεν βοηθάει αλλά στο τέλος αποζημιώνει.

[Patty_pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Spider è Dennis, Dennis è Spider. Ognuno è parte dell'altro. La parte buona e la parte cattiva. Sono ricordi o sono immagini quegli avvenimenti che Dennis ricorda? Devono essere ricordi, sono ricordi. Mamma era buona, ma papà l'ha uccisa. Io sono diventato cattivo da allora e mi hanno rinchiuso. Ora sono fuori e ricordo tante cose, si sono sicuro che sono ricordi, me lo ricordano anche le voci che dal solaio mi parlano... Spider e Dennis, Dennis e Spider... McGrath ci porta dentro la mente di Dennis a trovare Spider, a cercare la verità? No, perché la verità la sappiamo già, almeno crediamo di saperla e dobbiamo soltanto aspettare che Spider aiuti Dennis a trovarla. Ma la verità è che il manicomio ha scavato la mente di Dennis, lasciando Spider a reggere le fila di un equilibrio alquanto instabile. McGrath ci porta dentro la mente folle di un uomo pazzo, attraversando il viale dei ricordi che però cela al suo interno una folle verità, quella che Spider sapeva bene e che Dennis rifiuta di vedere. Bel romanzo.

[Lara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book. I wish I could give it 1/2 a star. I quit half way through...I couldn't read any more. No matter if I read just one page or even a paragraph...when I put this book down I felt nothing but gloom. I tried to finish it to see where the story was going but I couldn't get past the awful feel the book gave out. Maybe that is what it was going for...if so...it's not something I want to read. Ever. Ick. Half the time I couldn't tell if what I was reading was in the present or the past. Some paragraphs were over a page long...and seemed to ramble. I just...hated it.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark, disturbing, depressing and sad. Pitifully sad. Makes one wonder about the inner lives of all those people on the margins struggling with mental illness...the homeless, frail, elderly. The title is very apt, as it is a character study of someone's darkest moments. The perversity and anxieties that invade someone's mind in the night. The novel is meticulous and intricate, yet subtle at the same time. It builds gradually, but you can tell where it is all heading...but it is a strangely alluring insight into the character's memories and fantasies. Masterful writing.

[Juxhin Deliu · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Spider" è il soprannome del protagonista (o meglio, del suo alter ego), Dennis Cleg, chiamato così dalla docile e comprensiva madre in quanto appassionato collezionista di insetti oltre che l'essere un ragazzino filiforme che ama intrufolarsi dappertutto, anche per proteggersi dall'infido padre. Sin dalle prime pagine si evince che il nostro è un personaggio bizzarro, appena tornato da un ventennio di degenza in una casa psichiatrica dopo un trauma famigliare che ha finito per alienarlo dalla realtà e renderlo schizofrenico. Egli decide quindi di "tessere" (come un ragno) la trama del misfatto, risalendo per ogni cunicolo della sua memoria e cercando di capire il perché si sia impigliato in questa tela... scoprendo pian piano però un'altra spiazzante verità a monte della sua soffocante analessi. Il tutto pare come se fosse alla base il soggetto per un nuovo film sfidante di Cronenberg.

[Mark Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m sorry that for some reason the description of this book is coming up on Goodreads in French; I obviously read it in English because I heard about it on book tube as one of the best horror books ever dealing with madness. The horror aspect is slight, but the, slow moving plot dealing with madness is excellent. We meet the main character as a young boy, then as a mental patient in a asylum for 20 years and then after he is released. He is an extremely unreliable narrator so I’m really not sure exactly what he did and did not do in his real life. For that reason, I lowered the book to four stars, but in terms of writing about madness, this author is a master and I can see why it was well received on book tube. Eerie, gothic, and atmospheric. Definitely unsettling.

[Whisper19 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I watched this movie ages ago (Ralph Fiennes is brilliant in it) and as soon as I finished it, I ordered the book. I tried reading it then, in 2007, but for some reason I stopped. This weekend was the right time, it seems. This was a slow, quiet thing. There's nothing groundbreaking here, just a man whose mind shattered, but the way McGrath describes it is really intriguing. And the way he puts together sentences is wonderful. It's very poetic at times, beautiful, in a story where nothing else is beautiful.
Really enjoyed this quick read.

[Ada · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
A grim and unsettling little story about mental illness written in lovely, descriptive prose. Not ridiculously unrealistic or appallingly stigmatizing, as far as fictional depictions of psychosis go. I felt a great deal of sympathy for Spider and his desperate attempt to weave a tolerable narrative of his past.

This won’t be my last McGrath.

[Maico Morellini · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Ma se i vedenti diventavano ciechi, allora i ciechi - e, per qualche strana ragione, io mi sono sempre considerato un cieco - ...i ciechi diventavano vedenti. Mi ricordo che mi sentivo a mio agio nella nebbia, felicemente a mio agio nelle tenebre e nell'oscurità che tanto confondevano il mio prossimo."

Dennis "Spider" Cleg è abituato a nascondersi. Lo ha imparato in fretta per non innescare la rabbia di sua padre Horace. Quelle cene silenziose fatte di nebbia, di rumori ovattati del non essere visti. Perché attirare l'attenzione di Horace non era mai una buona idea.
Dennis ha anche imparato che i contorni sfocati potevano essere una benedizione se la compagnia era quella giusta: quei contorni li riempiva con la fantasia, giocando con la madre, unica ancora di bontà in una casa, in un quartiere - quello di Kitchener Street - e in una città - la Londra del dopoguerra - che di buono aveva ben poco.

"Incomincio a scrivere [...]. Quando ciò accade, io ho la curiosa sensazione non di scrivere, ma di essere scritto, una sensazione che è giunta a provocare in me brividi di terrore, deboli all'inizio ma sempre più forti di giorno in giorno."

Parla di sé, Spider. Lo fa attraverso le pagine del suo diario, pagine alle quali affida il passato, il presente e l'idea di un futuro molto difficile da sperare. Scrive, Spider. E nello scrivere stringe un patto con noi, con la signora Wilkinson, con le anime morte che abitano la bettola in cui vive, con suo padre, con sua madre, con Hilda e con un quartiere che si avvolge su di lui fino a soffocarlo.
Perciò il diario diventa una vera e propria ragnatela. Un tessuto i cui fili tesi vibrano a ogni ricordo, fremono sotto il peso delle memorie e nel tendersi, nell'intrecciarsi, nel tremare attirano Spider stesso fuori dal passato nel quale si è rifugiato. Spider. Che quella tela l'ha costruita. Ma che di quella tela è prigioniero. Proprio come noi.

[João Barradas · Rating 3 out of 5]

A aranha é um animal habilmente matreiro que, ao tecer belíssimas teias geometricamente hipnotizantes, usurpam a atenção de qualquer um que com elas se cruzarem. Embevecidos por tão douta matemática, as presas ficam enredadas e imobilizadas. Até que, num segundo fatal, recebem um beijo fatal de um animal que sabe esperar pelo momento oportuno para agir e conseguir cumprir os seus planos.
Dennis Cleg autodenomina-se Spider, não aparentando, no entanto, nenhum dom para tecelão nem tão pouco uma alma de espião. Apesar disso assume essa identidade e inicia uma triste narração sobre a história da sua vida entre uma mãe submissa e um pai ausente. Os passos dados sobre este frágil fio de vida não permitem manter este ténue equilíbrio e cedo surgem terceiras pessoas que, como uma borracha avassaladora, eliminam os seus predecessores. Mas as borrachas não duram para sempre e podem ser apagadas por um meia chama, fruto de uma orquestrada explosão.
Porquê aranha então? Quiçá por Dennis, qual animal ardiloso, ser um narrador prolífico, viajando entre momentos passados e presentes a seu bel prazer e apresentando factos conforme quer. Assim, o leitor vai ficando enovelado num rol de histórias sem conseguir separar a verdade da imaginação. Até que, sem o esperar, recebe um ferroada final e deixa-me ficar aturdido, não compreendendo o que pensar de tudo aquilo. Para além disso, como o juvenil Homem-Aranha, Dennis também encerra em si uma multiplicidade de facetas (ainda assim, nenhuma delas com a alvitração de salvar o mundo).
Afastando as teias e o pó acumulado, pelas flutuações entre tempos desconhecidos, este thriller psicológico traz à luz o negrume de uma alma humana perturbada, demonstrando um cepticismo extremo face ao mundo. Incomoda e, por isso mesmo, dificulta a digestão das palavras lidas. Ou então, o veneno está presente em tamanha quantidade que inviabiliza qualquer movimento: o dos neurotransmissores nas sinapses nervosas ou o das mãos para folhearem este livro.

[Victoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could rate this higher but I didn't enjoy myself as much as I thought I would.
Although this is a well written novel, it left me gutted and empty inside, and perhaps I felt defeated... and a little enraged, which I guess I knew this going in, so a low ended rating isn't quite fair to the author.
There were parts so screwy that I couldn't comprehend - that I had to skim them quickly to continue with the story. This was written first hand by a mentally unwell narrator, so had I continued to read it, I felt his crazy would seep into my brain, and I guess I don't need nor want that presently! lol
The symbolism, in this book is absolutely beautiful, chock full of creepy crawlies, crows, cold wet and dark places, spiders, insect collections, this made my heart feel fulfilled, as I adore these things and want to marinate in them!
As far as the story, I felt it was a bit predictable, I wasn't surprised, but maybe I am just more keen to mentally unwell characters- perhaps this is more a blessing then a burden in real life!

I think I have grown sick of the typical mental health novels... they continuously put a bad light on mental illness, and let me tell you something, not everyone who is mentally unwell wants to hurt you! Sometimes they do, but sometimes.... a person has a continuous fight and struggle against mental Illness and perhaps they WIN that fight, every single day, and perhaps you wouldn't even fucking know it, because that person will always appear NORMAL to you!
How nice it is to be completely normal and 100% of your brain functions properly, so you can peer down at the mentally unwell and point your fucking finger and say... THAT'S THE BAD GUY.
/end

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an amazing book -- very well written and made me very uncomfortable -- but impossible to put down.

It starts off as the journal of a man who obviously has some psychiatric issues and is living in a halfway house in the East End of London in the 1950s after completing 20 years in a prison psychiatric hospital. Gradually through his journal, you find out about his childhood, his living situation now and his wandering to fill his days back to the old allotments (gardens) and by the canal, both familiar to him from his boyhood, Both seem to spark memories and he is always talking about going to see his old house close by -- but for a long time never does.

You get very drawn in to his story and feel sorry for him, then gradually about halfway through the book start to realize that you are in his paranoid psychotic reality -- and he is disintegrating fast. You then begin to speculate about what may have happened and about what will happen, The woman who runs the halfway house starts to turn (in Spider's mind) into the tart, Hilda, whom his father moved in to the house (Or did he? Was this really Spider's distorted view of his mother?)

You never get everything explained -- you are left with many speculations and inferences from what is written -- and your own imagination fills in the blanks.

A great read -- and thanks, Rich, for loan of the book.

[Stefania Ultraviolet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bello tutto, ma se poi non mi dici come si è svolta davvero la sequenza di eventi, io, che sono un po’ stupida e da sola non ci arrivo, un po’ ti odio.